I don’t steal husbands. I collect them. Homes break, women cry, and I walk away richer every single time. I mean, why chase boys when I can own kings?
Wives weep, husbands beg, and I, Vera, always win the game.
Vera was the kind of woman who made heads turn without trying. Every step she took was deliberate, every smile calculated. She wasn’t interested in love songs or wedding bells. No—Vera had her eyes on something else entirely: married men.
From the day she turned 23, she made a silent vow: I will never be the woman crying over a cheating husband.
Instead, she would be the woman wives whispered about behind closed doors, the one who wore their husband’s affection like a designer bag.
By 28, Vera lived in a luxurious apartment tucked away in one of the wealthiest parts of the city. Her closet was a museum of silk, lace, and glittering jewelry—gifts from men who returned home to wives they barely looked at anymore.
Everyone warned her.
Her mother, a woman of deep faith, had sat her down many times. Vera was her only child, one she had sacrificed everything for just to see her through school. Yet, she had chosen to become a homewrecker.
“My daughter,” she would plead, clutching Vera’s hands like they were slipping away, “what you are sowing will one day be reaped. No joy comes from building your life on the tears of others.”
Vera would only smile, calm and unaffected.
Mama, I don’t plan to get married. I don’t want a husband someone else will sleep with. Better I stay free. Better I be the storm than the victim. Besides, who told you people that there is a God? There is no such being. So don’t worry about hell for me.
Her mother looked at her pitifully, then left her to her decisions—and their consequences.
Her friends tried too.
At brunches, during shopping sprees, on late-night calls fueled by too much wine.
“Vera, this is dangerous. Karma has a long memory,” Amaka once whispered across the table.
Vera only laughed, swirling her mimosa.
“I am Karma,” she replied.
In her world, love was a transaction, marriage was a joke, and loyalty was a myth. She prided herself on the art of seduction, on being the escape for bored, aging men who mistook lust for love.
Some nights she would lie in her king-sized bed, counting the designer shoes lined neatly against her wall, feeling powerful. Untouchable.
“I am not the fool,” she would tell herself. “I am the player.”
But deep inside, in the quiet corners of her mind she dared not visit too often, there was an unease—a hollow echo that no amount of money, whispered promises, or diamond-studded necklaces could quite silence.
Still, Vera marched on, heart armored, mission clear—to leave a trail of broken homes behind her.
Because she believed the world owed her no kindness, and she owed it none in return.
Vera grew bolder with time. It wasn’t just about the gifts anymore—the luxury bags, the wads of cash, the surprise vacations to Dubai.
It became a hunger. A sick satisfaction.
Every time she heard of a woman crying because of her, she felt powerful, like she had cracked the secret code of life.
It’s either you break or get broken, she would mutter to herself, slipping on a new pair of heels for another forbidden dinner date.
One of her proudest conquests was Alhaji Musa, a wealthy, respected family man with three grown children and a wife who had stood by him through poverty and prosperity.
Vera didn’t care.
Within weeks, Alhaji was eating out of her palm, showering her with gifts so heavy even her neighbors whispered.
A new car.
A boutique shop in her name.
Vacations to Zanzibar.
She had him completely.
And when Alhaji’s wife, Hajia Aisha, showed up at Vera’s boutique one blazing afternoon, Vera didn’t flinch.
The woman was dressed modestly, her face lined with exhaustion and heartbreak.
She looked at Vera, her voice trembling.
“Please, I beg you, in the name of God, leave my husband. You are destroying my family.”
Vera tilted her head, a small, cruel smile creeping onto her lips.
She looked Hajia up and down slowly, like inspecting damaged goods.
“Maybe if you weren’t so ugly,” Vera said, her voice dripping with mockery, “he wouldn’t have come running to me.”
Hajia’s eyes widened, but Vera wasn’t done.
“Do you even look at yourself in the mirror? You smell like old soup. Your skin is dull. Your hair looks like chewed sponge.
A man like Alhaji deserves to be around someone fresh, beautiful—someone who knows how to keep him satisfied.”
Each word was a blade slicing through Hajia’s dignity.
“And by the way,” Vera added, leaning in like sharing a secret, “he says you’re a dead fish in bed. The only excitement he gets now is from dreaming about me.”
Hajia stood frozen for a moment, tears brimming in her eyes.
“My God will judge you, Vera. One day, you will meet your match, and you will regret every single thing you did to me.”
Then, gathering what little strength she had left, she turned and walked away.
Days later, word spread that Hajia Aisha had packed her things and left the marriage.
After three decades of loyalty, after bearing him children, after surviving the rough and lean years—she was the one who walked away.
Vera celebrated that night.
She popped champagne in her apartment, music blaring, dancing alone in her living room.
She didn’t care who she destroyed.
In fact, the more tears she caused, the higher she felt.
In her mind, she was untouchable. A force of nature.
If they were too weak to fight for their marriages, that was their problem, not hers.
But Vera didn’t know that even forces of nature sometimes meet something stronger.
And her own storm was quietly gathering.
One evening, Vera was lounging by her pool when she first heard the news.
Alhaji Mubarak had just been promoted to senator.
He was the richest senator—and the most influential.
Power. Influence. Untouchable wealth.
He wasn’t just another rich man.
He was the man.
Vera’s lips curled into a slow smile as she scrolled through pictures of him on her phone.
Tall. Robust. Dark-skinned. With the kind of swagger that only deep pockets and deeper connections could buy.
He will be mine, she thought, sipping her wine. By any means necessary.
But Vera knew Alhaji Mubarak was not like the others.
He had a wife who was as influential as he was—a woman many feared.
His political circle was tight. His movements, guarded.
Ordinary charms and seductive glances would not be enough.
She needed something more.
That night, Vera wrapped herself in a beautiful Ankara gown and drove two hours outside the city to a village where the modern world still bowed to the old gods.
There, hidden behind the market square and thick canopies of trees, was the woman who had been her secret weapon for years—Mammy, the great woman of the water spirit.
The air inside Mammy’s hut smelled of salt and fire, heavy with something that felt alive.
Mammy sat on her throne of cowries and wood, her gray eyes sharp and knowing.
“You are back,” Mammy said without turning her head, stirring a pot of thick, bubbling liquid.
“You want something bigger this time?”
Vera knelt on the woven mat without being told.
“Mammy,” she whispered. “I need him. Alhaji Mubarak. I need him to fall for me, to be mad for me. I want him to leave everything for me.”
Mammy chuckled—a sound like a wave crashing against rocks.
“The bigger the fish, the deeper the price, child.”
Vera didn’t flinch.
She had long decided her soul had been on loan to this path since the day she first tasted the power of making a married man crawl.
“I’m ready,” she said.
By dawn, the ritual was done.
Mammy had bathed her in a basin of enchanted waters, whispered forbidden words into her ears, tied a red string around her ankle, and pressed a strange oil into the hollow of her throat.
“You are now the storm he cannot escape,” Mammy declared.
“But be careful, child. The higher you climb, the harder the fall.”
Vera didn’t care.
Warnings were for the weak.
When she left the village, she wasn’t just confident.
She felt invincible.
She could almost feel the power pulsing under her skin, electric, dangerous. 2 days later, she dressed for the event where she knew Alhaji Mubarak would appear.
A charity gala filled with the city’s finest. As she stepped into the glittering hall, her dress clinging to her curves like a second skin, her perfume a weapon in the air, Vera smiled to herself. Tonight, the real game would begin. and she was ready to win. The ballroom shimmered with golden lights, chandeliers dripping crystal droplets onto men in sharp suits, and women draped in diamonds.
To be continued…
Courtesy: Julieth Angel Babyscoo
